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The summer of 1977 brought a sound that had never been heard before in the neighborhood: the electronic beep of Pong, the first video game to capture the country’s imagination. Two players moved simple paddle lines across a television screen, batting a square ball back and forth in a crude imitation of table tennis. To … Read more

On September 10, 1987, in Seattle, Washington, a man named Martin Todd Lewis sat in a federal courtroom, waiting for a jury to decide whether he had been selling cocaine. The name was an alias. His face was supposed to be hidden. The government had spent years trying to keep him alive. Martin Lewis was … Read more

Joe Pistone, the FBI agent who would become known as Donnie Brasco, first encountered the rules of the Mafia as a young recruit. On the night he became a “made man,” a member of the Bonanno crime family, he was told the same thing he had heard during his early years as an agent: you … Read more

Lena sa det som en viskning som gled genom grillröken och fastnade i halsen på mig. Ava skrattade för högt med ett glas billig rosé, den sorten som färgar läpparna så att man kan mäta sanningen i glaskanten. Jag stod vid kolen med tången i ena handen och hörde orden som knäckte benet i vårt … Read more

The question of what mobsters ate has always fascinated people, and the answers often defy expectation. The most powerful men in organized crime were not always devoted to pasta and red sauce. Their preferences ranged from kosher pickles to Cracker Barrel, revealing surprisingly personal tastes. Al Capone, the most infamous gangster of the Prohibition era, … Read more

The world gathered to celebrate what was hailed as the wedding of the century, unaware that the ceremony masked a transaction far darker than romance. Grace Kelly did not simply marry a prince. According to the account presented, she paid two million dollars of her own fortune to enter a union that would make her … Read more

In 1990, an American soft drink company received seventeen submarines from the Soviet Union. Not blueprints, not paperwork—actual diesel submarines moored at naval bases in northern Soviet territory. The deal also included a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer. The Soviet Union had no hard currency to pay for shipments of Pepsi syrup. The ruble … Read more

Der schwere Eichensessel, in dem ich seit fünfzehn Jahren jeden Morgen las, stand plötzlich in der Garage. Ich blieb in der Tür stehen, den Kaffee in der Hand, und starrte auf die gähnende Leere im Wohnzimmer. An seiner Stelle thronte ein moderner Drahtstuhl, der aussah wie ein Vogelkäfig. Mein Sohn Florian und seine Frau Saskia … Read more

Lee Radziwill was born Caroline Lee Bouvier in Manhattan on March 3, 1933, into a world of old money and rigid social rules. From the start, she went by her middle name, finding Caroline too stiff for a girl with restless natural sparkle. Her father, John Bouvier, known across New York as Black Jack, was … Read more

In the summer of 1922, Alcid Veret was a twenty-eight-year-old guide who knew the Atchafalaya Basin as well as any man living. He had spent thirteen years reading its water, its islands, and its shifting ground. So when a letter arrived from the Delta Cypress Timber Company of Baton Rouge, offering him eight dollars a … Read more